Welcome!

The Future Classroom Lab is created by European Schoolnet, its supporting 30 ministries and industry partners to help visualise how conventional classrooms and other learning spaces can be easily reorganised to support changing styles of teaching and learning. It’s a physical, reconfigurable space composed of an interactive classroom and an open space including five different zones, each of which are equipped with specific furniture and technology. The facility was officially launched in January 2012.

The FCL will be used to:

Stimulate discussions and illustrate practice related to a range of current and prospective innovative teaching and learning scenarios.

Act as a venue for meetings, workshops and events for Ministries of Education, regional education authorities and commercial partners.

Provide a platform where policy makers, practitioners and ICT suppliers can come together in order to rethink how teaching and learning can take place in 21st century classrooms and other learning spaces.

All three CPDLab courses will be delivered in the Future Classroom Lab. Moreover, CPDLab is closely linked with the FCL dissemination and communication activities giving it a wide visiblity among all the FCL visitors including national and regional education authories, European level decision makers and industry partners.

iTEC – Designing the future classroom

iTEC (Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom) is a four-year, pan-European project focused on the design of the future classroom.

With funding of €9.45M from the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme, the involvement of 15 Ministries of Education and school pilots in up to 1.000 classrooms in 12 countries, iTEC is the largest and most strategic project yet undertaken by European Schoolnet and its supporting Ministries.

The third CPDLab course “teaching and learning activities for the future classroom“ will be based on the learning scenarios developed within the iTEC project. This will create a link between the projects and thus provide dissemination opportunities among the 27 iTEC partners, numerous Associate Partners, over 1.000 teachers taking part in the iTEC project and other stakeholders.

Interactive Whiteboard Working Group (IWB WG)

European Schoolnet’s Interactive Whiteboard Working Group (IWB WG) was established in order that Ministries of Education can share experience related to the use of IWB technologies in schools and explore areas of common concern. It is one of five EUN working groups set up to help develop an annual work programme that is in line with priorities set by its supporting Ministries.

Currently 15 Ministries of Education are members of the working group: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK. The working group is also supported by a number of IWB vendors.

The IWB WG will follow the work developed in the CPDLab project with a great interest since it feeds into their discussion agenda since one of the project’s courses will be on “innovative pedagogical use of Interactive Whiteboard technologies in secondary schools“.

Insafe

European Schoolnet coordinates the European-wide Insafe network and runs many projects dedicated to promoting safe, effective use of technology by children and young people of all ages as well as by teachers and schools. Through work in the field, we have forged a leading role in Europe and internationally, collaborating with institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe and actively participating in policy dialogues within the worldwide Internet Governance Forum.

Safer Internet Day, organised since 2004, now involves thousands of local, national and international events across more than 73 countries. Resources such as the Family eSafety Toolkit and activity book created by the eSafety coordination team are being taken up internationally.

The Insafe network, funded by the European Commission, is at the heart of our eSafety activities, and is enriched by several satellite projects supported by indus-try. Insafe is a rapidly expanding network in both size and remit. In five years it has doubled in scale to a total of 30 national centres, reaching across the whole of the EU to Russia, Norway and Iceland.